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Monday, July 17, 2006

The Master Painter

Back in my college days (I was an art education major) I was required to take a series of art history courses. They always seemed to be scheduled at 8 a.m. and they always followed the same format: slides and a droning lecture. It wasn't easy to stay awake sometimes.

I did perk up when we got to Impressionists. I love painters like Renoir and Monet. But I was surprised when the instructor pointed out that many paintings were not done entirely by them. They would put in the basics and then their students, those they mentored, had to copy their style and, under the master's eye, finish the paintings.

For some reason that came to mind this morning. It was probably a result of a discussion on ghost writing on a writers' forum. A ghost writer often writes a book for someone else and many times does not get the credit for it. He is the master of the work, creating the framework of the story, putting the words together and making them come to life, but someone else gets credit.

If we see God as the master in our lives, we can choose to be like the student painters, copying the master, filling in what he has begun in our lives but giving him the credit. Or we can choose to be like the self-acclaimed celebrities who never credit their ghost writers, letting God set the framework, put together the story of our life, but not give him the credit and hoping that no one discovers how fake we are.